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Lige Clarke
(February 22, 1942 - February 10, 1975) U.S.A.

Lige Clarke

Author, activist

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Lige ClarkeBorn in the mountains of Southeastern Kentucky, Elijah Clarke, best known as Lige, lived in a whirlwind of adventure and excitement. Lige was exceptionally popular with his mates; he was appreciated rather than teased for his creative expressions.

A beautiful, multi-faceted pioneer of the gay liberation movement, he lived out the many paradoxes of his being with an indefatigable aliveness and zest. Fiercely passionate, Lige was also gentle, androgynous and loving. Sharply critical of heterosexist power structures and anal-retentive puritanism alike, he resisted the temptation to relapse into a cheap gay separatism.

Lige ClarkeFrom 1964 until his tragic 1975 murder in Mexico, Lige wrote, thought about and fought for same-sex love, for the obliteration of destructive prejudices and boundaries and for a new human being freed from the shackles of traditional conditioning and its resultant moral shackles.

The most media-noticed statement in Dr. Alfred Kinsey's famous report about sexual behavior in the human male - according to a chapter describing Kinsey in Before Stonewall - was that 1 out of 3 males we pass on the street has experienced an orgasm at least once in concert with another male during adulthood.

Lige poo-pooed the idea that same-sex love is a minority condition. He said that it was a natural human inclination, and that like the much-maligned and very universal sex act that we call masturbation, same sex love and affection has been discouraged by a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition that has harmfully turned it between men or between women into a stupid taboo.

Lige ClarkeLige helped organize the first gay protest at the White House in 1965. As an early member of Washington Mattachine, he was also a founder of Florida's Mattachine Society during that same year. In 1968 Lige started teaching Hatha Yoga in Manhattan. From 1969 to 1973, he co-edited with his partner since 1964, Jack Nichols, (see photo on the left) America's first gay weekly newspaper, GAY and was always working to wed-in his writing and in his life-- the personal with the political.

Lige Clarke was a world explorer who visited many countries during his all-too-brief life, he toured the five continents in 1974. In his journal he kept while a steward on the liner Vista Fjord, Lige wrote of having learned to say "Good morning" in several different languages. Following his 1974 travels around the world, Lige's view of America changed radically. He used to say we must keep our passports at the ready to escape quickly should the Republican zealots get too scary.

Lige and his partner Jack Nichols were active members in the homophile movement; the couple worked closely with Frank Kameny and the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., as that organization helped launch the direct-action phase of the movement in 1965. In the mid-1960s, Clarke and Nichols began writing a column, "The Homosexual Citizen", for The Mattachine Review. (The title - "The Homosexual Citizen" - first appeared in the 1950s in a column written by lesbian pioneer Dr. Lilli Vincenz.)

Clarke-Nichols
Lige Clarke (left), and Jack Nichols (right), New York City, c. 1970.
Photo by Kay Tobin, @nyplpicturecollection.

In 1968, Lige and Jack were approached to write a column for Screw magazine; "The Homosexual Citizen", as it appeared in Screw, was the first queer-interest column regularly to appear in a non-queer publication. The couple also published books including "I have more fun with you than anybody" and "Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers". In 1969, Jack and Lige founded Gay magazine; it was the first weekly gay newspaper to appear widely on newsstands. To many, Lige and Jack were "the most famous gay couple in America".

On February 10, 1975, Lige Clarke was shot and killed under mysterious circumstances near Veracruz, Mexico; he was thirty-two. There are a number of theories as to what happened the night of Clarke's death, though there are no definitive answers. Near the end of his life, Jack Nichols appeared resigned to the idea that Clarke was killed by border agents who discovered gay rights material in Clarke's car.

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Source: http://lgbt-history-archive.tumblr.com/ and alii

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